If Then | News on technology, Silicon Valley, politics, and tech policy

In this episode April Glaser is joined once again by co-host Siva Vaidhyanathan, director of the Center for Media and Citizenship at the University of Virginia. They start by talking about the Sri Lankan government’s shutdown of Facebook and WhatsApp after the Easter attacks on churches and hotels.

Then they talk to Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai, a staff writer for Motherboard and producer for CYBER, a Motherboard podcast about hacking...

In this episode April Glaser is joined by guest host Siva Vaidhyanathan, director of the Center for Media and Citizenship at the University of Virginia and author of several books about social media and the internet, including a recent one on Facebook, “Antisocial Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy...

April Glaser is joined by Gizmodo investigative reporter, Kashmir Hill, to talk about an ambitious British proposal to regulate content on social media sites. Then they discuss Airbnb’s efforts to kick White Nationalists off its platform ahead of a national summit in Tennessee. 

After that they talk to Pat Brown, CEO and founder of Impossible Foods, about his company’s eerily realistic fake meat products and his vision for a more environmentally sustainable food system...

April Glaser and Will Oremus discuss a recent report in Bloomberg that says executives at YouTube ignored employees who raised concerns about the spread of harmful videos. The company’s algorithm often recommends conspiracy videos, which lead viewers down rabbit holes they might not otherwise explore. 

Then journalism professor Emily Bell talks about Google and Facebook’s recent efforts to revive the local news industry...

Aprill Glaser and Will Oremus kick off the episode by talking about Apple’s plan to be the ultimate middleman--with new offerings announced this week of streaming video, games, and more. Then April offers an update on efforts in Congress to restore net neutrality. 

After that Veena Dubal, a law professor at UC Hastings, talks about worker strikes at Uber and Lyft and then sheds light on a California case that reclassifies most gig workers as employees instead of contractors...

On today’s show, April Glaser and Will Oremus first talk to two researchers who’ve uncovered new information about the way the U.S. government trains its facial recognition software. According to their findings, the government uses photos of immigrants, children, and even deceased prisoners to train their programs...

On today’s show, April Glaser kicks things off by talking about Facebook’s long-overdue crackdown on anti-vaccination groups. The social media platform announced it will stop allowing advertisements that peddle misinformation about vaccines, and they’ll make anti-vaxxer groups and pages harder to find...

Everyone says you should use a VPN. But what about when the VPN is totally sketch?

Journalist Casey Newton on the trauma of Facebook content moderators.

Palantir has been criticized for building predictive policing tech, now the company is working with the UN.